The writer Clive Barnes once noted, “Television is the first truly democratic culture—the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.” It may be true that some people seek out bad television, but often people watch bad television only because they cannot find good television. Indeed, the development of personal video recorders (and VCRs before that) has enabled people to better select the shows they watch, and to avoid watching whatever happens to be on at the moment. Thus, people will watch good television if they can find it.
Electronic program guides provide a common mechanism by which people can find television programming. These guides commonly display information about a number of programs in a grid of cells arranged by channel and time—much like their predecessor paper guides, such as those published in the old TV Guide magazines and in newspapers. The information, when displayed on a display device like a television, may be static, in that the information is simply displayed to a user on a particular channel, such as in a continuously scrolling grid of channels. The information may also be interactive, in that users can scroll through the grid themselves and can select a certain cell, to be switched to a program represented by the cell.
Improved interaction with program guides and an ability to better find and interact with programming information can greatly increase the ability of users to find and manage programming that best suits their needs. As a result, such users can have a better viewing experience and can also watch more of what they enjoy and less of sub-par programming.